Two Angels
by he was whole again
Summary: With Roxas, Axel doesn't need to be afraid.


The first time that it happens is during the summer following second grade. At first, Roxas doesn't really think anything of it because Axel has always been pretty good at hide and seek, but when a few hours pass with no dice it's enough for even a seven year old to know that something's up.

He tells. He doesn't want to. Axel always calls him a tattletale, and if there's anything he hates it's the look on his friend's face when Roxas tells about how Brett hit him or how he stole Roxas' ice cream. It comes rushing out of him, and watching the grown-ups faces fall is enough for him to know that something is _seriously wrong_.

The entire neighborhood looks with a sense of unity that Roxas has never seen before. Even the neighbors that keep to themselves stay out until the sun goes down. Jon can hear how everyone calls out "Axel!" every so often, and to his ears it's nothing but a one sided game of Marco Polo.

He sits on the porch after a while and cries. He's been searching too, his skin flushed from being in the sun all afternoon and the tears against his cheeks make his skin feel like it's cracking. His brother Sora sits with him and he doesn't really say anything at first, but then Roxas has been crying for a good fifteen minutes, going from a silent weep to wracking sobs.

"People don't just—do that." Sora insists. "He didn't just _disappear_." He insists. "He had to have gone somewhere."

_But where?_ Roxas wants to ask, but he doesn't trust himself to talk just yet. It takes another few minutes for him to quiet down, although aftershocks of sadness rock through his body every so often, a hiccup reminding him of his grief.

He takes to distraction, darting into the backyard, then over the fence that he's climbed so many times, clearing himself into the field behind the houses_. People don't just disappear_, the words echo in his ears, and suddenly Roxas is running although he doesn't know where.

He comes to a dead stop when he hears Axel's voice, nearly careening into the ground face first with the force of the sudden stop. "A-Axel?" He asks, his voice quivering from the crying. He sniffs, once and with dignity, looking around. He can hear Sora approaching, shouting for him to come back, but his ears are trained for the sound of his friend. "Axel." He repeats again.

"Look up." He hears, and he does but he doesn't see. Roxas squints, and he has to be missing something.

"Roxas!" Sora says, his voice full of exasperation as he comes to a stop next to his brother. He raises a hand to the boy's shoulder as if to keep bring him back into the yard, but Roxas shrugs him off, still looking upwards. There's nothing around them except grass and a tree, tall and majestic.

"I don't see you." Roxas says plainly, and Sora tries to ask what he's talking about, but he hushes him.

"Here." Axel answers—and there it is.

He blinks into existence, as if he's been there the whole time, and later Roxas comes to understand that he _had. _There, in the tree, sat Axel. His clothes were a mess, his skin just as flushed as Roxas'. Deep red hair disheveled, leaves and twigs caught in it like a web, and the image of him perched in the branches is burned into his friend's mind. Fire on green.

* * *

They don't really talk about it for a long time.

Roxas isn't sure where to even start; he has so many questions. How, what, why, and they echo around in his head until the ricochet of his thoughts is enough to drive him insane. He says nothing anyway, because Axel shies away from the topic altogether for a long time.

It becomes another fact of suburban life: the disappearing boy. People whisper about it like a circus act and luckily for Roxas, he's got a front row seat for the show. They come close to talking a few times. The incident, which becomes incidents because Axel suddenly starts disappearing every other day, gets casually mentioned now, and it leaves them both in awkward stasis.

They're a year older now, and still friends, although Axel's anxious invisibility drives a wedge between them. They don't play every day anymore, and the halcyon innocence that clouded them is replaced by a murky maturity. They don't play hide and seek anymore.

Roxas has taken to talking to Axel through the fence when he blushes into transparency. They sit through on opposite sides of the picket and just speak, one of them visible and the other not.

"I wish I wasn't like this," the air, Axel, says to him.

Because ignorance has filled the space between the two of them, Roxas is required to ask, "What do you mean?" Like he isn't speaking to nothing and nothing is talking back.

There's a sigh, and Roxas hears some of the grass being pulled, imagines it floating seamlessly through the air, as if being levitated. "I wish I was more like everyone else, I mean."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with you."

"At least people can see you." There's an edge to the words, but warmth at the same time, an affection that makes Roxas tingle on his edges.

He wants to say that being seen isn't always great either, wants to say that he wishes he could be invisible too most days.

What he says is: "I see you."

It's enough for now.

* * *

At some point, Axel stops going to school altogether. Roxas wonders if it's possible for someone to become a drop out in the sixth grade. But like always, Axel defies any and all expectations that the boy has. They're eleven now, in the awkward creases between childhood and adolescence.

Roxas has other friends too now. Mostly Sora's friends, because Roxas is horribly awkward and his voice has started to crack and so he avoid speaking much altogether. They have a little crew. The older girls coo over Roxas sometimes, talking about his baby face even though they're only a few years older.

He brings Axel along sometimes, although he spends more and more of his time invisible these days, so outings like that are rare. Most of their interactions happen through the fence, as they have for the past four years.

"Are you ever coming back?" Riku asks him on one of the special outings. They're all hanging out in the park, and Roxas looks up from his place in the sand. Axel sits in the swing, his gaze downcast for a moment, wincing at the question.

Roxas shoots Riku a look, and it's the older boy who looks away first. It doesn't matter that Roxas is anxious to hear an answer too.

"I don't know." Axel answers. "Not yet." There's a pause, a lull and no one says anything and the tension is more awkward than Roxas feels even on his worst days. "I'm being homeschooled for now."

"Well, _I _think it's cool." Riku insists. "I mean, how many people can do what you can? It's—"

"_Riku_." Roxas interjects, his voice sharp, cracking.

"What? I'm just saying…" His gaze turns to Axel, and his voice trailing off.

Roxas knows what sight awaits him when he turns to glance back at Axel: an empty swing.

* * *

He walks Axel home, holding his invisible hand. They haven't touched since they were kids. It's like if no one sees it, then it doesn't count.

* * *

Four years pass and Axel still hasn't come back.

He tells Roxas in passing a few times that he's getting a handle on his gift. _His gift_. Roxas isn't sure when they started calling it that. Roxas wonders if it was Axel's idea or if it was something his parents forced on him to keep him from getting too down.

He's taller now. Well, so is Roxas, but Axel is an absolute tower. Roxas has to tilt his head upwards to get a glance at the same eyes that used to be within his line of sight for so long.

Everyone meets in Axel's room after school. Sora's friends have become Roxas' too, and he feels a little less like a tag along sometimes, but he's still acutely aware of his youth compared to them. He and Axel sit on his bed together, listening to the others talk about their days for an entire year. They talk about prom and things that seem far off and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Things lost in translation, almost. He can't seem to relate or even comprehend them.

Sometimes it's just them. It's then when Axel asks him what's really on his mind.

"What about you?" It's a vague question, but somehow Roxas knows exactly what he means.

He could talk about how it sucks. How he gets pushed around a lot and how he had an entire carton of milk dumped on his head the other day. But he settles for something equally vague. "It'd be better with you."

* * *

Axel insists on walking him home.

"I live next door, dork." Roxas teases, but Axel _insists_.

He steps inside through the backdoor, watching through the screen window as Axel hops the fence, disappearing into nothing as he feet go over.

Roxas' mom watches too. "That boy's got a thing for you." She tells him simply, and Roxas doesn't deny it and says nothing.

* * *

It turns out Axel isn't all talk. He actually does get better at controlling his gift. There are still blips, but everyone at school already knows what the deal is, and it turns out that even high school juniors are capable of being courteous.

They're sitting in the cafeteria, and it's almost surreal for Roxas as he watches Axel push peas around his plate. "So?" Roxas asks, almost expectantly. They don't have classes together on Tuesday, and this is the only chance Roxas gets to even see him.

The cafeteria buzzes around them, unaware, as something seems to shift between them. "This place sucks." Axel says plainly, but then he shoots this grin at Roxas. One he hasn't seen for years, nearly ten.

He feels like a kid again, and he can't look away. Maybe he has a thing for Axel too.

* * *

Sora pesters Axel into joining track. Track wasn't even the first sport that his brother had in mind, but for whatever reason, Axel had refused any offer to join the football team in the fall.

But with spring comes awakenings. Something awakened in Axel and something awakened in Roxas just as the world too came back to life. A confidence in the redhead had reared its head, and it was like Roxas had traveled back in time.

This was the Axel he had spent summer afternoons with until everything had changed when they were little. With Brett transformation came one of his own.

No longer was Roxas the misshapen architecture of bones with a cracked voice. His voice had deepened and evened out. He was taller now, a little fuller too, although still skinny by any given standard.

He was slowly coming around to Axel, found the confidence comforting just as much as he found himself getting lost in those eyes for the first time. When he could see them, anyway.

Roxas watches every practice, walks home with Axel every day, and teases him about how he always smells.

* * *

They get drunk in Axel's basement once, and then never again. Sharing a bottle of vodka that tastes awful, but curiosity wins out in the end. They sprawl out on an area rug, the tv playing some god awful action flick that neither of them pay attention to.

It's dark this time of day; nothing to stare at but the dimness, and Axel leaves the lights off. Roxas watches the ceiling fan spin absentmindedly. "Why didn't you join the football team?" He blurts out.

There's a pause, and Axel props himself up on one elbow and just looks at him for a while. Almost too long, and Roxas shifts away, trying not to notice. "They're jerks to you."

Roxas scoffs. "Nice answer."

"You want me to be honest?"

Roxas nods, an eyebrow arched.

"I don't wanna be a jerk to you." Axel begins, and then pauses, still looking intently at the blond. "You wouldn't like me anymore then.

Roxas rolls his eyes and rolls onto his side, back to Axel. He can't look because he doesn't want his face to betray him. "Always gonna like you, Ax." He affirms.

"Oh." Is all the other boy says and when Roxas turns back to him, he's vanished.

* * *

Roxas goes to every track meet, and so does his family. He and Axel's folks sit together in the stands and cheer the redhead on. Roxas pretends like he's there for Sora too, but it's a lie. He isn't sure who he's fooling.

He doesn't know much. About track, or about anything. But he knows enough to figure that Axel is fast, that he has a calling.

He watches Axel line up for the hundred-meter dash. Watches, feeling flashes of sickness, as a girl runs up just before the race starts to whisper in Axel's ear, watches as she pecks him on the cheek. Watches his friend fall into perfect form. Watches him practically launch into flight.

Watches him vanish ten meters short of the finish line.

* * *

Axel vanishes for a few hours. No one knows where he is. Naturally, Roxas is the first to know.

It's late, and there's a tapping at his window. He opens it and Axel, unseen, clambers in. It isn't until the dim light of Roxas bedside table is on that the other boy chooses to let himself be seen.

Roxas is almost embarrassed to be wearing a pair of pajama bottoms; ratty and patterned with cartoon aliens. He sits cross-legged on his bed and just stares.

"Well, you're fast, at least?" He says, because what else will he say?

"You have to think that." Axel is sullen.

"I don't have to think anything." Roxas launches back. There is a silence then between the two of them. While it's awkward, he figures he'll get the big thing out of the way. "Who's the girl?"

"Just a girl." Roxas wonders if he's ever held her hand while invisible, ever ran a hand through her hair the same way he touches Roxas' head.

"I don't want to date her." Axel says, and Roxas feels alarmed that the other boy can read him so easily, suddenly feels exposed and vulnerable. He pulls his knees to his chest, rests his chin on his kneecaps.

"Okay."

* * *

"It happens when I freak out, I think. Like I get scared or nervous." Axel tells him a few days later.

They're in a familiar position, talking through the fence even though Axel is fully visible. Roxas can see him pulling grass out of the worn lawn just like he did when they were children.

"I mean, I can control it. Just not when I'm freaking out." Axel shrugs. "Not when I'm scared."

"You don't have to be scared with me." Roxas tells him, and he watches as Axel eyes him through the slits in the pickets. Eyes studying his face in the small space offered to him.

"Okay."

* * *

Roxas knows that Axel watches him sometimes. Knows that he's in the room sometimes. Knows that he thinks he's sneaky. But Roxas can smell him.

"If you're gonna watch me get dressed," He murmurs one morning, eyeing how the window is open just a crack, betraying the invisible boy's presence. "You could have the decency to ask." He teases, throwing the blanket off of him.

"What, I can't appreciate the art?" Axel asks, appearing by the window wearing a hoodie that's too big for him. He's the one who looks like art.

"You might have taken a wrong turn. Museum's the other way." Roxas says, pushing him back out the window. He might give the other boy a tease by pulling his shirt over his head before shutting the blinds.

It's all a lie, though. They don't talk anymore at school. Axel's started hanging out with the football team.

* * *

It gets a little better and a little worse for a while. The football team backs off of Roxas thanks to Axel's influence.

Axel also backs off of Roxas altogether.

* * *

"I don't want to be an excuse for them to jump you." Axel tells him one day, invisible, standing in the door way as Roxas brushed his teeth.

Roxas spits out the toothpaste, watches the water swirl it down the drain, wants to follow it. "You're scared." He accuses. "That's what this has always been about."

"Maybe a little."

"I'm not scared at all." Roxas spits; Axel's reflection flickers in and out of sight in the mirror.

"You're brave." Axel tells him, and there's a jealousy and an admiration there; the familiar edge with affection that Roxas has become so accustomed to.

Roxas shuts the tap off, turns to the thin air, and kisses where Axel's lips should be. "You don't have to be scared with me." He repeats.

The air kisses back. Desperately.

* * *

Axel disappears altogether one day in English class. Roxas calmly leads him out. It's never happened so suddenly.

"I'm—" Axel begins, but can't finish. He slowly appears again until all that's left is his left hand out of sight; firmly entangled with Roxas'. "I'm sorry. You were right. It's all _scary_."

"It's okay." Roxas says, although even to his own ears he sounds tired, isn't sure if it really is okay.

"What if I don't come back one of these times? I've always been scared of that."

_Me too, _Roxas wants to say, but he says nothing, running his thumb over the air where Axel's knuckle is.

* * *

Sora takes Kairi out for dates all the time. Roxas and Axel never go on dates.

Instead, in the summer following eleventh grade, they let the neighborhood kids play marry them. Olette tells Axel to kiss the groom and he doesn't at first. He just stares at Roxas with that familiar grin and his stupid eyes.

Then Hayner complains that the game was taking too long and they would peck on the lips and go do something else.

* * *

"I think I'm gonna like you until I die." Axel tells him one day.

* * *

They walk into school when it lets back in holding two visible hands.

Roxas can feel the eyes of the football team on them. Axel's grip on him is a vice.

He remembers how Axel looked like a fire in the tree that day; wishes they could float away like two angels and just vanish.


End file.
